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TRAINING CAREGIVERS

A new LCC program helps prepare people to fill a growing need: caring for the elderly or disabled in their homes

By Randi Bjornstad

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Monday, July 26, 2010, page D1

If you’ve ever tried to hire someone to provide skilled personal care for an elderly or disabled relative, or you’ve thought you might be good at that sort of work in general, here’s good news: Lane Community College has developed a new program to train and place a new classification of worker — personal care aide — in homes and care facilities throughout the community.

The idea occurred to Lida Herburger, program coordinator of LCC’s continuing education department, as she “kept on looking at caregiver ads in the newspaper.”

“On Sundays, I might see three, four, five, six, even seven ‘help wanted’ ads for caregivers, some from family members and some from agencies,” Herburger said. “There seemed to be a real need in the community for a new kind of caregiver, and I wanted to fill that need if I could, by creating another career path.”

So she went to Barbara Susman, director of LCC’s new Successful Aging Institute, and the two hatched their idea.

For one thing, “We noticed that we especially needed new career ideas for older women, of every age and every background,” Susman recalls. “We also realized that for people who have been informal caregivers, this could be a good step toward a next career, if there was a formal training program to prepare them.”

Becoming a personal care aide, whether in private homes or a variety of care facilities, could be a goal in itself, “or it could lead to a further career,” Herburger thought.

“Someone could train to be a personal care aide, and then they might want to become a certified nursing assistant, and then a registered nurse. Everyone has to start somewhere,” she said.

Herburger and Susman designed a training program and then, using some grant money for vocational training, they ran 21 people through a pilot program of the 40-hour curriculum last spring.

Response from both students in the class and agencies that hire caregivers was so positive that LCC will begin a regular personal care aide training program this fall, starting Oct. 7.

Heather Hall, director of Addus HealthCare Inc. in Eugene, said she not only will hire people who receive personal care assistant “awards of completion” from the LCC program, she will pay them more per hour than those who haven’t taken the class.

“I know that people who have completed these classes have the skills and match exactly the requirements I am looking for in this position,” Hall said. “If I hire people from other facilities or who don’t have this specific education, I don’t know how well-trained they are, and they have to be matched with a nurse watching them do their job until we can be sure they are suitably trained.”

The classes will be open to people age 16 or older. Teenagers younger than 18 will need signed parental consent.

“With the numbers of people needing this kind of care shooting through the roof, and the high costs of moving into residential facilities, we believe there will be a huge demand for this kind of work,” Herburger said.

The list of tasks that would-be personal care aides in LCC’s program must master is long, starting with a philosophical understanding of the aging process — physical, mental and emotional — and the job requirements involved in providing personal care assistance to aging or disabled clients.

They also must know the differences in cause and treatment for many chronic diseases — ranging from diabetes, arthritis and Parkinson’s to stroke, brain injury and depression — as well as recognizing warning symptoms for these conditions.

Appropriate assistance with personal hygiene and medication, care of people in wheelchairs or bed and recognition of elder abuse also must be demonstrated, as well as knowledge of fire safety and activities that maintain physical and mental stimulation among the elderly and disabled.

But even people who care for their own family members at home can benefit from the program, organizers say.

“If a family member went through the training and completed it satisfactorily, they would be able to be paid,” Hall said.

But whether caring for a family member or a stranger, caregivers such as personal care aides “need to have a calling for it,” Herburger said.

“With all the high unemployment now, people might hear that the health care field is the place to look for work, and they might decide that’s what they should do. But that’s not enough. To do this work, you have to know exactly what you’re getting into, and you have to really want to do it.”

“With the numbers of people needing this kind of care shooting through the roof, and the high costs of moving into residential facilities, we believe there will be a huge demand for this kind of work.”